Ryanair is calling on the EU to prevent air traffic controllers (ATC) from striking after the chaos caused by today’s strikes in France. It says that ATC workers should not have the “right to strike” and if they do they should be sacked.

In typical Ryanair fashion, it had further possibly unpopular ideas such as an EU reform on passenger rights legislation to say airlines will no longer have the “right of care” obligations to help stranded passengers.

Ryanair said it has been forced to cancel 2,000 flights and delay more than 12,000 flights as a result of Belgian, French and Spanish ATC strikes so far this year.

“European governments bungled and failed to keep European skies open in April and May after a volcano thousands of miles from Europe erupted and now they are once again failing to keep Europe’s skies open as passengers and airlines face yet more travel disruption due to strikes.” said Ryanair head of communication Stephen McNamara.

He added: “We once again call on the EU to remove the ‘right to strike’ for ATC as it is for other essential services like the police and fire services. Striking ATC controllers don’t care about consumers, they don’t care about passengers and they repeatedly strike because they know they can shut down Europe’s skies and hold EU Governments and passengers to ransom. The EU Commission must act now to end this ATC chaos.”

[…] The last French strikes were by air traffic controllersand disrupted many flights from the UK and France. This sparked strong words from Ryanair which called upon the EU to change legislation for air traffic controllers rights to strike. […]